In a computer network system, it is conventionally a common practice that the individual opens a homepage to provide content created over the Internet.
When a user personally opens a homepage, the user acquires a homepage creation program via a personal computer (hereinafter referred to a “PC”), creates a homepage hyper-linked with a plurality of content, based on the homepage creation program and stores the homepage in a server of an Internet service provider (hereinafter referred to as “ISP”).
Then, the ISP provides the homepage to clients who access it over the Internet from the server and when an anchor on the homepage is clicked, then the ISP provides linked content.
In recent years, content supplied to clients over the Internet include many moving images and voice in addition to still images. To provide content such as these moving images, moving image files and voice files created by the user are uploaded beforehand in a predetermined storage area of a streaming server of the ISP. Then, at the request of the client, the streaming server of the ISP performs stream distribution of the file corresponding to the request to the client over the Internet.
Furthermore, the technique of performing stream distribution of content such as moving images to clients over the Internet also includes a technique called “live distribution” in addition to “on-demand distribution” whereby a moving image file is uploaded in the streaming server beforehand and distributed in response to a request from a client as described above. In live distribution, moving image data created by a content creator, for example, using a digital camera, is encoded in real time and this is set to the streaming server over the Internet, etc. Then, the streaming server performs streaming reproduction while recording the moving image data supplied in real time from the content creator in a dedicated storage area and can thereby supply the moving image data in real time to the requesting client.
On the other hand, when the above-described live distribution is performed, the content creator needs to send moving image data to the streaming server in real time, and it is necessary to secure a communication path to transmit moving image data between the streaming server and a personal computer (hereinafter referred to as “PC”) of the content distributor for a period during the live distribution. This limits the number of content that can be live-distributed using the streaming server during the same period and in a time zone to which many applicants rush, there is a problem that the content distributor who has been preparing for live distribution in the time zone cannot perform live distribution in that time zone. In order to prevent such a problem, it is possible to use the streaming server based on a reservation system to insure efficient use of the streaming server to perform live distribution.
If the use of the steaming server is determined based on a reservation system as described above, content creators without a legal reservation may illegally use the streaming server unless content creators who have accessed the streaming server via the Internet, etc. to perform a live distribution in a certain time zone are authenticated to be users with a legal reservation. This requires authentication processing to authenticate whether a user has a legal reservation or not and such authentication processing must authenticate that the user has the right to use the relevant live distribution service and at the same time has a reservation in the relevant time zone, which would complicate input operations, etc. for authentication by the content creators and the processing by the providers of services such as live distribution, that is, the processing on the authenticating side. Moreover, use of a technique of making a multitude of simultaneous calls to an access point to access the streaming server above may make the access line to the streaming server busy, thus preventing the use by content creators with a legal reservation, which may put in danger the continuation of the reservation system.
Such a problem can occur not only with the reservation system of the streaming server for carrying out a live distribution but also when a user PC uses the functions of a processing server that carries out predetermined processing other than live distributions via a network such as the Internet and a reservation system is adopted taking into account the processing capacity of the processing server and securing of the communication path between the both parties, etc.